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Chances are I missed it amongst the avalanche of promotional tie-ins — gummi Smurfs, anyone? — but it seems to me The Smurfs 2 requires a dairy connection.

Something along the lines of a fat blue cow, contentedly mooing as this franchise once again milks moviegoers of their hard-earned greenbacks.

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This is another way of saying The Smurfs 2 has everything you hated about the first movie, and more. It’s brought to you once again in UP3D (Utterly Pointless 3D) as a combo of animation and live action, with more bad Smurf puns and product cash-ins than you can shake a blue stick at.

The “you” in question being anyone over the age of 6 who is obliged to sit through this cavalcade of craven capitalism, which is directed on autopilot by a returning Raja Gosnell and penned by no fewer than five writers, who I suspect may really be robots.

The Smurf-out-of-water storyline from the 2011 summer hit has essentially been transposed from New York to Paris, raising the alarming thought that this franchise could plow on through an endless series of world destinations and undemanding tots.

In lieu of novelty, but true to sequel logic, everything has been magnified. The Smurfs now have a pair of not-nice rivals known as the Naughties: Vexy (Christina Ricci) and Hackus (J.B. Smoove), who are in cahoots with the cranky wizard Gargamel and his sneering cat Azrael in again trying to steal valuable “Smurf essence.”

The film’s constant daddy issues are tripled. Agitated adman Patrick now has not only a rambunctious young son (baby Blue from The Smurfs, grown to tot) but also a meddlesome stepdad (Brendan Gleeson). Meanwhile, young Smurfette (Katy Perry) finds herself feeling blue about her family history on the unhappy occasion of her birthday.

Smurfette is the catalyst for the whirring portal between the bucolic Smurf and frantic human worlds to reopen. Hijinks ensue again when a band of brave Smurfs, led once again by the platitudinous Papa Smurf (the late Jonathan Winters), storm the human world anew.

The Smurfs, of course, have to outwit Gargamel to prevent “total Smurf-ageddon” from occurring, or something equally dreary.

As Papa Smurf would tell you, it’s important for everybody to just be what they want to be. Do you love unconditionally? That’s very Smurfy of you.

You’d have to be smoking a very large blue crack pipe to think the sellers of Smurf smarminess would want to mess with this very profitable formula, originally based on a Belgian comic strip that began in 1958.

And it’s hard to begrudge a guy like Brendan Gleeson, who has toiled in so many indie underachievers, enjoying a big payday.

Still, it would be nice to see a little more creativity and a little less capitalism for our little blue buddies.

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